Overview

There are a lot of artifacts involved in knitting: needles and yarn of course, but also notions such as darning needles and stitch markers. How do you keep them organized so that the collection doesn’t take up too much space in your one-bedroom apartment, but you can still easily access everything? My own collection of knitting paraphernalia is organized in a few different ways, detailed below.

This organization system involves a hierarchy of faceted classification, physical space constraints and some unique interactions that need to be designed for.

What resources are being used?

Not all yarn is created equal. There are different weights: from very thin yarn for lace and socks to very thick yarn for blankets or crafts; different fibers: man-made fibers like acrylic and nylon and natural fibers like cotton and all the different types of wool; and colors and patterns. There are also extrinsic properties like what I plan to do with it or where it came from. As well as yarn, a lot of different kinds of knitting needles are in the collection: straight, circular, and double-pointed needles of varying length, made of wood and aluminum and in sizes 0 to 18. There are also notions, such as point protectors, stitch markers, darning needles, stitch counters, scissors and measuring tape. Patterns are specifically not in this organizing system, since they’re either books, organized with books, or on the internet, organized through Ravelry.

Why are the resources organized?

The main interaction that is being organized for in this system is selection: making sure that I can find my size 6 circular needles, and also that I can pick out yarn(s) to make a project. Since the collection of yarn is so large, though, I don’t know exactly what I have, so selection is often more a process of exploratory search than known-item search. Selecting two (or more) different yarns for the same project is a similar process of exploratory search, but only for one value of the material facet. (Different materials act in different ways, especially in terms of how they have to be washed, so you generally don’t want to use two yarns that are made of different things in one project). Co-location is important for the yarns, to facilitate this process of exploratory search.

How much are the resources organized?

There are five containers that my collections is in: one box-style needle case where I keep the smaller of my set of straight bamboo needles; one roll-up needle case where I keep circular needles, straight needles that aren’t part of that set and the bamboo straight needles that won’t fit in the box; one small pouch where I keep really small needles, notions and crochet hooks; a vintage train case where I keep particularly ‘nice’ yarn; and a huge wire basket, about the size of a laundry basket, where I keep the rest of my yarn.

As should be apparent by now, this is about the most idiosyncratic organizing system you’ve ever heard of. It definitely won’t outlive me, probably wouldn’t outlive moving to a bigger apartment, and definitely won’t outlive moving to a house (where there will be room to implement something that makes a little more sense). All of these decisions have reasons behind them, though, although they weren’t logical or even particularly well-considered. For example: I started out keeping all of my yarn in the train case, but as the collection grew (quite sharply at one point, when I was given a garbage bag full of yarn) I had to move to a bigger container, stored in the closet, and kept the train case out with what I was currently working on. When I moved the bulk of the stash to the wire basket, I kept the nice yarn in the train case so it wouldn’t get snagged.

The basis of this organizing system is hierarchical faceted classification. So, for yarn, we start with ‘nice’ or not, which depends on whether it has sentimental value, how much I paid for it, what it’s made of, whether or not I have plans for it, and other such factors. After that, the classification is no longer physically apparent, since it’s all just in a big basket, but it still exists: material, color, yardage, &c. That being said, I do tend to have recently-used yarn at the top of the basket, because the basket operates as a stack, and yarn that I particularly like at the top of the basket, just because I like having it prominently displayed.

When are the resources organized?

Resources are initially classified upon addition: whenever I buy some new yarn or a new set of needles I have to decide where to put them, and therefore where they fit in the organizing system. There’s also some periodic maintenance, and re-organizing all of the needles and leftover yarn after finishing a project.

Who does the organizing?

For my collection, I am the only person who does the organizing. The system is not codified at all, and even if someone had all the organizing principles written down they wouldn’t be able to successfully maintain the system because so many of those principles are subjective. (For example: what yarn feels gross? what has sentimental value? what yarn am I probably going to make socks out of? which needles are slippery?)

Other considerations

Because the resources in this collection get used up over time, culling is a large part of maintenance. Periodically, I have to go through and weed out yarns that don’t have enough left to make anything out of, or that have gotten too snarled to work with, or, surprisingly often, that I’m not sure why I even had in the first place. There is a specific type of knitting pattern, called a stash-buster, meant to deal with these odds and ends left over from various projects, so a small amount of yarn is not useless by default, but has to be considered within the collection as a whole.